Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I Attempt to Answer a Reader's Question

A reader of mine(I LOVE saying that!lol) named Free!~ asked a question the other day in the comments.
I thought it was a great question and worthy of a blog post.

She is a newish blogger and wondered how to find readers.

So I went over and checked her blog out to see what she was doing already or not.

One thing you need to do is 'enable' the "Follow" feature if you have a Blogger blog.
This lets folks who want to follow you do so with Google Friend Connect and/or put your blog into their Google Reader so they can find your new blog posts in their reader each day and not to go have to search through all the blogs they read. Personally, I throw every blog I like to read into my "Favorites" on my computer, so I have the URLs bookmarked.

While you don't have to have your "Follow" feature abled, it's nice to see all those icons and your number of followers on your blog's home page. 8-)

So how to gain readers?
* Well you could do giveaways and/or contests to get readers. Either find a company to sponsor a prize or if you are independently weather, supply a prize yourself. ;-)
Make people become followers as a way to get an entry to your giveaway.
Make people blog about your contest to get an entry.
Make people post on facebook and/or twitter to get an entry.
Make people have a friend enter your giveaway(and when they say XX friend told them to enter, give both an entry).
Post your Giveaway/Contest on one of the Blogs that sponsor a Giveaway Post(this is a post were you can link to your Giveaway from their blog). Do a search for Giveaway Memes or Giveaway Blogs.
Do a joint Giveaway with another Blog. Connect with another blogger(or more than 1 other)to do a joint giveaway. That way you get to cross advertise your giveaways on that other blogger's site.

* Find another Blogger who is looking for "Guest Posts". In your travels reading around the Blogisphere you will come across other bloggers who want other bloggers to write a post for their blog.
Either they want fresh ideas or they will be unable to blog for some time and need new posts to fill in rather than rerunning old material.

* If you have a blog you enjoy and read, write to that blogger and see if you can do a link exchange. Most bloggers will put you on their Blogroll as a courtesy. Some not so much but it doesn't hurt to ask.
I personally follow different types of blogs. I have gotten onto some of their blogrolls, but the ones who limit their blogroll to one type of blogs(personal finance, deals, humor, etc.)often won't exchange links with me since I am all over the places with topics. If you are strictly say a frugality blog, it's easier to find other strictly frugality blogs to exchange links with.

You've got a nice Blogroll already Free!~ so contact all those blog owners about a link exchange.

* Some bloggers run "Carnivals". This is a special post of a collection of blog posts from many different blogs, usually on a certain theme or POV. You can submit particular posts and they choose which ones they want to include and the resulting Carnival Post will contain Links to all the selected posts. Carnivals can have many different themes and topics.....frugality, single moms, personal finance, retirement, homesteading, working moms, Christian moms, etc.

Often times bloggers will reach out and showcase other blogs they find with some "Linky Love" and point their readers in the direction of a new or new-to-them blog.

* You need to actively get your blog out there. If you read someone's blog that you enjoy, say something. The more you comment of other blogs, the more other bloggers will notice you......then they will go check out your blog and if they like what they read, they will stick around and keep reading you.
If you have family and/or friends in 'real life' then tell them about your blog.....er, unless you are dishing those family and/or friends on your blog.lol

* If you are desperate and rich enough, you could also buy ads on popular blogs to advertise yourself. I haven't gotten to either desperate or rich enough yet!
Or you could write an actual book and advertise your blog on your book tour. Yah, that's my plan!lolol

It might help if you have a Blogger blog to go into your dashboard, into the Analytics or STATS pages of your blog. There you can look up how many page views you have, how many readers and how they are getting to your blog....through a search engine or a certain other blog, etc.....and where they live and what type of browser they are using. This information might be informative in going forward or it could just be fun and a time waster, depending on what you do with it.

So who out there has some other great ideas to help readers find your blog?
I have some great brilliant readers so let's hear some ideas!

Oh, and it never hurts to butter up your readers and stroke their egos......!

13 comments:

Yep, I did it the long hard way. I just started commenting on blogs that I liked and then sometimes, those bloggers would come over and/or their Readers would see me. That said, I only left comments on blogs that interest me for some reason or another. I see Bloggers with thousands of Followers and I don't know how they do it. My problem is that I keep up with my Followers. How does one keep up with 2,000 Followers?m.

Mark--You don't....unless you want to stop sleeping and seeing your family and quit your job.lol As a reader, at some point you have to stop either commenting all. the. time. or stop reading every blog. As a blogger, you have to stop commenting on every comment...but do still read them all of course. I am very bad at commenting on comments and I always have been....and I've said so from the beginning. But it still doesn't stop people from getting pissed off at me, but I realize I can't help that from happening....so I don't worry about it anymore.And I suspect most of those thousands of followers on those other blogs aren't really following anymore. People follow and then forget to unfollow when they don't read any longer. I know I have 1 follower who is still following who left me in a snit with a nasty comment because I didn't comment on her/his comment once. But there she/he sits, following me still.lol I figure only about 10-20% of your "followers" actually actively read you and comment.

I got involved with the SITS girls blog. They will feature you and on that day I got a ton of followers! cool. I haven't gone back to them much since.I got into the habit of commenting on every blog I visited. If I liked the blog, I followed. If I REALLY liked the blog, I'll stick it in my bookmarks and visit every day. Then eventually they'll realize that hey! They have a regular and eventually follow me too. And Sluggy and I typically email each other back and forth outside of the blog and that definitely helps you know the blogger better. I've made a lot of imaginary friends! I set up a feedjit on my blog that I can check out and see where people come from. I found that a BUNCH come from a very busy blog that follows me and I'm on their blog roll! That was a nice surprise! So. The blog rolls are very very good to me.Off to visit! Have a great day!Oh! and put your email on your blogger account so people can email you back easier when you comment on their blog! If you don't, then you might appear standoffish and unreachable.

Thanks for this post! Mark ignore my questions to you...lol. I kinda thought I was famous for a minute. An entire post dedicated to me :) Sluggy thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I never realized the importance of commenting before.

Every blog I read I have found from the blogroll. I googled "frugal blogs" several years ago and grew my list from whoever I discovered first. Thanks again for all of the great tips.

McVal--Good ideas. What is that SITS thing all about? And I am happy to count YOU are one of MY imaginary friends too! ;-)

Now if I can only get my blog on some big name blog's rolls....

Free-Your are most certainly welcomed!I have found blogging friends the same way....I can't remember how I found most of them since it's been so long ago now, but I am always looking for new blogs to read.

Frances--I have found that too Frances. They must still be reading because with some I don't hear from them until I hold a giveaway and then they pop up again.lol So is it time for a giveaway so you and Marilyn can stuff the ballot box again?LOLOL

Hey there! Thanks for leaving a comment. Though I moderate it's partly to keep spam out but also partly so that I read every comment. I don't often respond to comments so if you need me to answer you please write me at my email addy posted on my "About Me" page, linked on the side bar.

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About Me

Welcome to my blog! I'm just an older mom, simple gal living my life as best I can. I enjoy saving money, talking frugality, couponing, compacting, personal finance, genealogy, about the South, art, theater and sewing, interspersed with my humorous take on the world and my daily adventures.
You can email me directly at arcure(at)ptdprolog(dot)net.